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Anybody got the "Lightning" Disk Cache?

R

Raven

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A few months ago I did some heavy research into disk caching software. As far as era software is concerned, it seems one called "Lightning" was the fastest of them all. I haven't, however, been able to find a single copy of any version of this program.

I would like to compare and benchmark with it, Scandisk (baseline), nothing (baseline), and modern solutions like LBACACHE, etc.

Anybody got a copy?

Edit: Apparently the filename is L.COM, for reference.
 
I had it back in 1990 or so for my 286. :D Sorry haven't seen the floppy for about 15 years.

I stopped using it once MS Smartdrive showed up and I got a 486.
 
Still looking? I'm sure I have it, although I'm also sure I have no idea how to copy it off a 5.25" floppy.
 
I think I might have it on several disks with manual but I just looked and didn't see it yet. Blue label with yellow lettering, iirc.
 
I think I have a copied disk of Lightning, but my last 5.25" floppy drive died some months back.

The disk has "BATCH" written on it, if that's any help.
 
Re benchmarking against no cache, it will depend on the DOS BUFFERS configuration (more here).
 
Raven said:
A few months ago I did some heavy research into disk caching software. As far as era software is concerned, it seems one called "Lightning" was the fastest of them all. I haven't, however, been able to find a single copy of any version of this program.

I would like to compare and benchmark with it, Scandisk (baseline), nothing (baseline), and modern solutions like LBACACHE, etc.

Anybody got a copy?

Edit: Apparently the filename is L.COM, for reference.
Click to expand...

I found some software and booklet that said lightning. I'm not sure it's the same thing you were looking for though. I just happened to find it late last night but need to check what it does.
 
Just did a search for l.com on my hard disk, found one l.com from 1988 but no docs, this may be it?
Sorry for the mess but it looked prettier in the txt file it was piped to. If you want it just holler.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ÉÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ»
º º
º LIGHTNING Version 4.82 º
º º
º Copyright (C) 1987 Personal Computer Support º
º Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved º
º "LIGHTNING" is a trademark of PCSG, Inc. º
ÈÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍͼ

Type L HELP for options summary

LIGHTNING is speeding up drives A B
Total RAM in use is 60 Kbytes
----------------------------------------------------------------------
And L HELP gets the following
----------------------------------------------------------------------
ÉÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ»
º º
º LIGHTNING Version 4.82 º
º º
º Copyright (C) 1987 Personal Computer Support º
º Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved º
º "LIGHTNING" is a trademark of PCSG, Inc. º
ÈÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍͼ

At the DOS prompt, type:

>L A ON turns on LIGHTNING for drive A:
>L B OFF turns off LIGHTNING for drive B:
>L AB P write-protects drives A: and B:
>L BC W removes write-protection for drives B: and C:
>L S shows statistics
>L Z clears statistics
>L U unloads LIGHTNING
>L nnn allocates nnn Kbytes of memory (1st time only)
>L M=n limits LIGHTNING to read requests of n or fewer sectors
>L ? asks whether LIGHTNING is installed
>L LAST = d sets highest drive checked on installation
>L HELP displays this message

Spaces and illegal characters are ignored.
If drive letters are omitted, all drives are affected.
 
I actually worked for the company (Lucid Corp) back in the '80s, and wrote the manual. Yes, it was the fastest, but when MS started building caching into the OS itself (~93?) we lost our market.

I still have a stack of shrink-wrapped copies I saved as souveniers, but have no floppy drive to read the disks with (5.25").

If you're still terribly interested, I can probably scavenge one from an old hard drive or something...

--Al--
 
The version you list (4.82) would probably be risky to use on any but the oldest machines (80286 or earlier). As Intel went to 32-bit registers (80386) and hard drives got bigger (>32MB) the risk of corruption was high. I'd recommend at least version 5.0, and 5.5 if you can find it.

--Al--
 
Al,

It's good to see one of the veterans working in the industry at the time visiting us.

What was the specific risk of running older versions on new hardware? Was it just flat out bugs, or was there a danger that the upper parts of the registers were being left dirty and Lightning was using them?

Way back then (1989) I paid for Hyperdisk, and it made a tremendous difference on my machine. But that was 80286 specific code and was able to use extended memory which the older versions of Lightning did not seem to use.


Mike
 
alh said:
I actually worked for the company (Lucid Corp) back in the '80s, and wrote the manual. Yes, it was the fastest, but when MS started building caching into the OS itself (~93?) we lost our market.
Click to expand...

What I loved about Lightning at the time was that it was a read-ahead cache. On a slow 8086, I never noticed much speedup from the hard drive, but the speedup from the floppy drive was immediate and impressive. I recall that running an SSI "gold box" game like Pools of Radiance took almost 3 minutes to load, but with Lightning installed it took about 50 seconds.
 
You are welcome :)

Lightng does not work on SD-Cards that were "mounted" as HDD (C:) on my Schneider EuroPC.
It works for the floppydrive but not for the Harddisk (because it's not a real harddisk?)
I'll test other cache Programs.

Btw. what are the essential and the smallest tools for an XT with MDA Hercules GFX

- Mod-/soundplayer ?
- Gfx-Viewer
- Editor (copy and paste needed)

Doc
 
dr.zeissler said:
Btw. what are the essential and the smallest tools for an XT with MDA Hercules GFX
Click to expand...

Anything that actually runs.

- Mod-/soundplayer ?
- Gfx-Viewer
- Editor (copy and paste needed)
Click to expand...


Modplayer: Galaxy Player (will require soundcard with DMA on a system that slow, no LPT DACs)
Gfx-Viewer: Graphics Workshop, cshow (not cshow 2000), LXPIC
Editor: Whatever you enjoy using. Some tests. The "t" editor is a 4K .COM file that is handy to have on boot floppies.
 
Galaxy has problems with Hercules gfx and you are right, without soundcard on such a low end machine it dos not work.
LXPIC has Hercules? The info begins with CGA, but I can test it.
Cshow is a big to big, qview 1.03 does not work with hercules, but it is by far the best viewer on lowend machines.
Thx for the editor-tests!

Greetings
Doc
 
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